A Matter of Gravity
by beb
Summary: Triana's friend, Kim begins her like in organized mayhem with a mission for the Guild of Calamitous Intent - to loot the treasury of Anton Koswalski, a rogue scientist on the brink of developing cheap anti-gravity, and by doing so push back his research by several years.
1. Chapter 1

I wanted to get this out before the stasrt of the fifth season of The Venture Brothers. The fourth season ended with a lot of things up in the air, which seemed like an invitation to imagine what I'd like to see happen. Thus "A Day in the Life of a Reformed Henchman", which in turn lead to "Lady Au Pair II" which sets up this story. In return for being allowed to become the new Lady Au Pair Kim is required to leave off Arching Hank Venture for one year, and also to do a mission for the Guild. This is that mission. Since trailers for the fifth season indicates that none of my ideas will become canon I probably should carry on with these stories, but until the new shows start airing next week I guess I can get away with one more tale. - beb.

* * *

"Target has been sighted" whispered in her ear over the music from her iPhone

"Showtime," she replied softly, and got up.

She threw her hands over her head and stretched She was standing on the lounging area around one of several pools at a big resort hotel in Cancun. She didn't check to see if the target had noticed. She knew without looking that she had captured the attention of every male around the pool. She fussed with the position of her deck chair for a bit, adjusted the blanket that lay on it. After a while she took off her cover-up and fiddle with the fit of her bikini. It was a forest green that perfectly complimented her long, red hair. There was't a lot of bikini to adjust, but she did it several times. Having killed as much time as she could, she sat down and opened a tube of sun block and slowly began applying it to her arms and legs. Out of the corner of her sunglasses she saw the target approaching. Everything was going according to plan.

She was struggling to reach the middle of her back with the sun block when a sauve, deep voice asked, "would you like some help?"

Bingo! she thought to herself, contact has been made. "I'd hate to impose," she said, glancing from well manicured toes up hairless legs to a broad and equally hairless chest to a face impossibly handsome. The dossier had said he'd had a lot of plastic surgery. And every dollar of it well spent.

"For a lovely girl like you, it would be my pleasure." he took the tube of sun block out of her hand and squeezed a portion onto his hand, spread it around a bit to warm before touching her back. He rubbed the lotion in with strong, confident hands.

"I could get to like this," the girl thought, then decided to say it out loud.

"You don't have a boyfriend to help with these matters?" the man asked in a voice that could have made a fortune in voice-over work.

"Too many boys, not enough man," she replied and hoped that wasn't putting it on too thick. She did have a boyfriend but a restraining order kept her away from him for the next year. She did have a couple of employees who were, she imagined were at this very moment taking enormous number of pictures of her in her bikini, the perverts. Either one could have killed for the chance to put sunblock on her back. Neither, though were Anton Koswalski, millionaire inventor and subject of a Guild take down. Taking him down was her first assignment as a member of the Guild of Calamitous Intent.

Anton continued talking to her in a smooth, continuous way. Making numerous compliments about her skin, her hair, the bold black stripe running through the red. He was a practiced seducer. As he talked his hands ran across her back in wider and wider strokes. They slipped under the string of her top then slid down her side. She must have tensed in anticipation of him groping her breasts because his hands hesitated a second then went back up. Without asking he stated rubbing lotion of her hips and running down her thighs.

When he started to move in on her inner thighs,Kim decided she'd spent enough time getting the fish hooked. She rolled onto her side and smiled up at the man. "Thank you for you help. I'm Claudia."

"Anton. Anton Koswalski. It has been a please to help." He smiled with perfectly even, white, capped teeth. "Are you here on business, or pleasure?"

"You could say it's both," Kim told him. "I'm a Au Pair and while my employers are having a second honeymoon in Bali I brought their children here for a vacation."

"Ahh," he said. "What a delightful way to kill two birds with one stone. Where are your charges?"

"Tim-Tom's over in the Splash Zone," she said pointing to a small chubby-looking boy in baggy pants and a t-shirt. The t-shirt hide a rather old appendix scar for a 4 year old to have. "And Kevin is at the water slide." A small black boy waved at her from atop the slide. He had a small camera in his hand. Through a combination of mirrors and lenses what looked like an ordinary camera with a 3x zoom lens actually produced a 20x zoom factor. She wondered how many voyeur pictures he had taken, then decided she didn't really want to know. As long as they stayed off the Internet...

Anton was looking a little confused at the black and white children. "Where they adopted?" he asked.

"No. Mrs. Townhouse has an eclectic taste in men," she said with a wordly sigh. "And since she has all the money, her husband puts up with it." Kim wondered if she should add something provocatively sexual to that barebone story? Nah, she'd already thrown in enough. "So what do you do?" she asked, innocently.

"Oh, I dauble a bit in Big Science, play the stock market, gamble."

"Does Big Science mean there's a Little Science as well?" She forced a giggle. "And what's the difference?"

"Little science is stuff like your Ipod. Big Science asks the most important questions of the universe, life and so on. Some people wish only to invent a better post-it note. I'm after the secrets to gravity!"

"Wow" Kim said, trying to look impressed. Truth be told when talking like that Anton Kowlaski sounded every bit as retarded as Hank Venture's retarded "super-sceintist" father. She could see why the Guild of Calamitous Intent wanted he taken down a few pegs.

They flirted for a few minutes until Kim was sure the hook was, as it were, firmly set, then suggested they go for a swim. They splashed around in the pool for a while. Anton was forever showing off his skills as a diver. He was good but his need to show-off grated. When he started playfully grabbing at her and planting kisses on her lips she decided that was enough. She asked what time it was then said she had to get the boys in out of the sun. She called to Kevin and Tim-Tom and when they came up made introductions to the nice new friend of hers. They acted like they hadn't been following his every moveement for the past two days. And whined like any four year old when told play-time was over and they had to go inside. Congenital midgets, both in their late 30s they were surprising adept at playing children.

The "boys" marched into the hotel while Kim was picking up hers and their things - towel, an untouched paperback novel, her iPod, and so on. As she was finishing up, Anton asked if he could take her to dinner that night.

Stage Two!

Kim congratulated herself. Of course she played hard to get, first refusing, then letting him sweet talk her into coming. Kim suggested they met in his room for some drinks before dinner, which he thought was a really great idea. Moments later she was walkng towards the elevators with the information they hadn't been able to get out of the hotel for two days - his room number.

She rode the elevator up to the fifth floor and walked down the corridor to the suite she and the Muderous Moppets shared. It consisted of a living room with built-in bar and two bedrooms. Kim threw her things on a near-by couch and called "Oh, boys! Your mummy's here!"

There was the sound of a shower running in the moppet's room. After a moment Tim-Tom walked into the living room, wearing only a towel around his middle.

"Put some clothes on!" she ordered but he just looked at her with his practised innocent look and said, "I just got out of the shower."

"Where's Kevin?"

"He's in the shower."

"Fine. Tell him when he comes out that our pigeon has asked me out to dinner and I have his room number."

"Great," Tim-Tom complained, "Cavier for you, nothing for us."

"I hate cavier, besides you can order up room service any time you like. Don't think I didn't see that lobster you two ordered last night."

"Eh. We can afford it." And they could, thanks to a bank heist the three of them has planned a couple months back. They'd hijacked a bank car and made off with a million dollars in assorted currencies. Four men had died defending that truck, which bothered Kim from time to time. Though mostly it bothered her that it didn't bother her more often.

However they were plowing through that million dollars a lot faster than Kim cared for. They had gotten in trouble with the Guild because she had stolen the identity of Lady Au Pair from its creator. Buying off the creator, the current Dr. Mrs. The Monarch, and bribing the Guild to forget about the trademark infringement had cut a deep hole in their cash on hand. But the Guild wasn't just about money. It also about control and - oddly for a gang of super-criminals - order. Because she had tried Arching wiithout permission they had put her on probation for a year during which she could not molest Hank Venture in any way. Also they demanded she perform a mission for them.

Anton Kowalski was a non-aligned super-scientist the Guild had marked for a take-down. She wasn't required to kill him. In fact the Guild actually sort of frowned on simple solutions like that. It created a shortage of super-scientists for the villains to Arch. But the Guild wanted his operations set back a couple years. How was up to Kim, sorry - the New Lady Au Pair. If she could siphon a couple million out of his bank accounts in the process, well, that's how the game was played.

"Conferance after I've had my shower," she said. "And I want both of you in clothes!"

"Yes, mum," Tim-Tom answered respectfully and walked back to the bedroom. Just before closing the door he dropped the towel and mooned her.

* * *

I am push this on a bit further, if not this a 007-ish story with Kim as Bond and Koswalski as the generic villain. There would be a flying island, an attack by Sphinx (with cameo by Brock) and Kim escaping from a fate worse than death by her own grit.

This is the first of two stories about the new Lady Au Pair. In the other, following this story Kim is frustrated because she can't arch Hank and because she can't see Gary either. So she has the Moppets kipnap Gary and tried to turn him into her sex slave. But Gary resents being held prisoner and keeps escaping (and being recaptured) finally during a trip to an art museum he notices Kim admiring one of the painting there and suggests that he'll help her steal it if she will let him go afterwards. And so it becomes a caper yarn. While I have much of the story written out in my head it never got written down so this story may never happen. Pity because I thought it was a good one. -Beb


	2. Chapter 2

Kim walked into her bedroom and locked the door. As minions go Kevin and Tim-Tom were great - smart, resourceful, faithful - but they were the worst perverts she had even known. With that in mind, her searched the room from top to bottom to make sure Kevin hadn't snuck into it while she was talking to Tim-Tom, or had planted any spy cameras to watch her dress and undress, or worse, use the can. She found two, one, a decoy, placed obviously, the other much more cleverly hide. Satisfied she's got them all, she dragged the straight back chair from the secretariat over to the door and wedged it under the handle. The Moppets could pick a lock faster than most people could open a door with the key. A barricade was the only safety.

With that Kim threw off her coverup, slipped out of her bikini and climbed into the shower. She turned the water hot and let it play over her body for a moment. It was hot in Cancun so you'd think she's want a cold shower to cool off but Kim had always preferred hot showers, something to open up the pores. As the steam piled up around her she wondered how to get back at Tim-Tom for mooning her. The Moppets were every bit hard to handle, as Dr. Girlfriend had warned, but they were also resourceful, loyal, and dependable. Tell them to do something and they'd do it. Except, maybe, when it came to telling them no to kill someone. They were a tad eager about knifing people.

It was weird that she resented so much the moppet's peeping at her because otherwise she liked walking into a a room and having every male's eyes swivel to look her over. She liked dressing in sexy clothes. She liked sex. She just didn't like the ways the boys were always trying to look up her skirts or down her blouse. She decided on chili powder sprinkled in their bathing suits for her revenge by the time she turned off the shower and slipped into a complimentary hotel robe.

She started laying her evening wardrobe. She'd already planned on a yellow dress with spaghetti straps, low enough in the front to show some cleavage but not a lot and ending just above the knee. The dress was a model of sexy but chaste. Exactly the sort of dress a flirty but responsible young nanny would wear. The shoes were sandals with a one inch heel. When she was training with the Blackhearts they not only taught how to run in six inch heels but conditioned her to think of high heels as a natural part of a woman's dress. But a responsible young Au Pairs do not dress in 'do-me' shoes. They wear 'sensible' shoes.

Kim opened the dresser drawer and started pulling our panties. She had not given any consideration to them before this and now found the choices baffling. Should she wear a thong, or the French-cut or the granny panties? White or black? Or something colorful? She looked from one to the next to another. Then threw them all back in the drawer, closed it and leaned against the dresser in thought.

She hadn't had this much trouble getting dressed for the Senior Prom. Of course her goals back then were so much simpler: drink till she puked, dance till she dropped and finally, when the sun peeped above the horizon drag the most beautful boy in school, Tommy Herron, to bed and screw the gay out of him. Apparently a lot of girls had thought the same thing because Tommy was darn good in bed but always he went down to his inseparable companion, Ben. Two out of three wasn't a bad average and even Tommy wasn't that much of a failure. Sex with the prettiest boy in school sure beat puking your guts for a prom memory.

But that reminded her of what the goal for the evening's activity was. And it wasn't to get screwed by the incredibly sculpted Anton Koswalski. It was to get him out of his room for a couple hours while the moppets tossed it looking for the access codes and passwords for his Swiss bank account. She had to appear interested and interesting without looking desperate, available, or too cheap. So - granny panties it was. Nothing made her feel less sexy and she'd need to keep her wits about her. And the strapless bra because nothing looked more trampy than visible bra straps.

She quickly pulled those items on before re-wrapping herself in the hotel robe. She wouldn't put on the dress until after she'd done her make-up. Making sure the robe's belt was double-cinched to prevent accidents, she removed the chair from the door and went out to talk to her boys.

The main room of their suite contained a large screen TV with a couch placed in front of it. A breakfast nook was built into the opposite wall. Between them was wall to wall glass window overlooking the bay. A balcony was reached through a pair of sliding doors but curtains were drawn now to keep out the glare from the westing sun. The furniture was heavy and upholstered in tough scotchgarded fabric. This was the family wing of the resort and everything was designed to survive a bunch of high-strung kids.

The moppets were sitting at a stout table near the sliding doors digging into a pair of steaks. They were dressed in their Little Lord Fautleroy suits, because this next part would be a Guild operation. Kevin has a wig of curly blonde hair pulled over his kinky black hair

"Don't eat so much you'll fall asleep," she warned, sliding into a chair next to them. Kevin and Tim-Tom were both sitting with their back to a wall. Without thinking Kim had taken a place that placed her back to one of the walls.

"We're hungry, mum," Kevin said.

"Yeah, running around in a splash zone like a couple of maniacs is a lot of work!" Tim-Tom added.

Kevin had cut his steak into small squares in advance, while Tim-Tom was slicing off bites as he went along. Kim picked up the steak knife and a jabbed one of Kevin's pieces. His knife, the razor sharp switchblade he always carried flashed out to block her. They stared at each other for a moment, then Kim said "Mommy tax," and popped the steak into her mouth. The meat seemed to melt in her mouth releasing an orgy of savory tastes. She looked over to Tim-Tom but he was leaning guardedly over his plate.

"Damn! I know what I'd order for supper if only dainty girls were allowed to order anything besides a salad," she said with a sigh.

"Well, we've got a lot to do tonight." Koswalski is room 1201. That's on one of the VIP floors. It's on 'limited access' so you'll need the pass code for the elevator to go up there. Can you get around that?"

"They've got cameras in the elevators, mum," Tim-Tom said. "They'd have us spotted in a sec if anyone complained. The safer route is through the fire escape."

Kim cocked an eyebrow quizzically.

"No cameras in the stair wells. There's a door blocking access to the ninth floor but it uses a key so no problem. We're lucky he didn't take the penthouse as there's a door blocking off that floor that has a camera and requires a key code of some length."

"You've been up there?" Kim asked.

"We've been everywhere, mum," Kevin answered. "No body thinks much about kids hanging around so so can go anywhere and nobody wonders why we're there."

"So you can get to the twelfth floor. Can you get in to his room?"

"Piece of cake, mum," Tim-Tom assured her. "We've been practicing on our door. Shouldn't take us more than a minute to crack the combination on his card"

"Wish we knew what sort of documentation he's carrying around with him. That would cut down on the searching. Still it's pretty sure that he's keeping the access codes to his bank holding with him. He never put anything on the hotel vault, right?"

"No, mum. We've kept a pretty close eye on him since he arrived at the hotel. He hasn't handed over anything to the concierge."

"Ok. He booked a reservation for the Aztec ballroom," Kim said. "So he's planning for dinner and dancing. That should give you maybe two hours to toss his room."

"An hour should do it, Mum, "Tim-Tom said. "We've been tossing rooms for years. If it's there we'll find it."

"Kevin, can you stop stuffing your face long enough to test out your earrings."

The black moppet hastily swallowed and wiped his hands and face on the linen napkin before hopping out of the chair he was in and pulled a small box out of his Buzz Lightyear backpack. He flipped the lid open and placed it on the table next to Kim. Nestled in tissue paper were a pair of clip-on earrings, they were slightly smaller than a quarter, gold rimmed with a polished turquoise disk. One had a large white speck among the green. He hanged it to Kim, "This is the live one." She clipped it to her left ear and tapped on it. A "tump" sounded from the jewelry box. Kevin reached under the tissue and pulled out a bluetooth phone and clipped it over his ear. He adjusted the curls to cover the device. "Try it."

Kim lightly tapped on the earring. Kevin winced as a loud thump echoed from the phone. He adjusted something on the phone. "Try again, mum."

She tapped. He made another adjustment. "Again." This time he seemed satisfied with the sound level. "What's the code?" he asked.

"Two taps when we leave Koswalski's apartment. Three taps when we leave the ballroom, and four taps if you two have to bug-out instantly."

"Correct, mum,"

"Good. Any other business?" The moppets both shook their heads. "Ok, then." Kim got up. Kevin stabbed one of his remains cuts of streak and held it out to her.

"No thanks. Don't want to spoil my appetite." She went back into her bedroom and worked on her make-up before pulling on her dress. She wandered back into the living room and checked her watch. Another fifteen minutes before she was to go up to his room. Time weighed on her shoulders. She went over the contents of her purse. It was beaded cloth with the design of a peacock on the side. It had a long, thin strap so she could hang it over her shoulder. Kim snorted. The travel agency where she's booked this mission had repeatedly warned her against just this type of purse since it made it so easy for purse-snatchers. She'd weighed that against the possibility of being n a fire-fight and having only one hand available because she was clutching her purse in the other. The strap had won out. Kim was not a fan of pants. they never showed off her legs the way skirts did, but at times she did admire the ability to stuff things into pockets. Her purse contained a little money (in traveler's checks as one would expect from an au pair), make up, a tiny can of mace, and a couple ball-point pens, one of which was actually a metal-cutting laser.

She looked at her watch. It was still fifteen minutes before her rendezvous.

"I'm going downstairs to walk a little bit on the patio. God, I'm so nervous. How does those James Bond guys keep so cool?"

"It's easy to be cool when you're just play-acting, mum," Tim-Tom said.

Kim nodded in agreement and went out to the elevator.

The patio was a long promenade extending across the back of the hotel, facing the ocean and the setting sun. An expanse of sand stretched from the hotel foundations out to the water. Hotel employees are stacking up the lounge chairs for the night, policing the sands for discarded cans and bottles, racking the sands smooth for the morning crowd.

Kim found a unattended portion of the patio and gazed out to the red sun just starting to touch the far horizon. There was always something beautiful about a setting sun, the reds, pinks and purple colors it spread across land and sea. And of course it heralded the start of all the parties in her life. Like a vampire, she only came alive after dark.

Another couple came wandering out on to the patio. They stopped maybe thirty feet from her. Tourists, of course, dressed in shorts and t-shirts. The girl leaned against the railing, like Kim was, while the man stepped behind her, circling her waist with his arms. He pressed his head near to hers and must have whispered something into her ear because she laughed. He started kissing her neck and shoulders. Gary had not been one for light, little kisses. One of the things she liked the big lug was that he was so direct in wanting her.

She was still happily thinking of Gary when she looked over at the couple again, and turned away in disgust. The man had slipped his hands under his girl's T-shirt and was baldly fondling her breasts. She hurried back into the hotel before the man decided to finish his foreplay by yanking his girlfriend's pants down.

A turn around the lobby to compose herself then Kim presented herself to the desk. "Claudia Mosconi to see Anton Koswalski, she said. The concierge summoned a bellhop and handed him a metal key. The hop lead her to the elevators and opened the doors. He inserted the key and gave it a twist before pressing the button for 12. The car went up to the twelfth floor without stopped. "Enjoy your evening, ma'am," he said as she stepped out. The door closed behind her.

The twelfth floor was laid out the same as the fifth floor where her suite was. 1201 was down the hall at the end of the building, facing out to the ocean. She tapped nervously on the door and after a moment it opened. Anton Koswalski was dressed in about a thousand bucks worth of casual. Grey slacks of fine wool, an off-white shirt and a sports coat. The clothes were smartly tailored and fitted him like a glove. He wore no jewelry except for a single, large ring on his right hand. It was a bit of a knuckle-buster made of Platinum with a large square onyx set in its surface.

"My dear Claudia, so punctual. Please come in," he said, taking her hand in a firm (but not too firm) clasp. He bent over and kissed her cheek. Straightened up, looked at her for a long second in the eye and added, "No, we must do as the French," and kissed her other cheek. He had on a light aftershave. Something citrusy with a hint of musk. If she weren't still pining for Gary Fuu she would have been happy to jump his bones right there.

Koswalski lead her into the middle of the living room. The room was much larger than her own suite, bedrooms included, With walnut paneling along three sides and rows of French doors leading out to a terrace facing the ocean. The little bit of sun was visible on the horizon. The center of the room was depressed a step into a little alcove surrounding a metal fireplace on the south wall. A couple logs had burned down into a bed of embers, casting a romantic glow to the otherwise unlit room. A long sofa fronted the fireplace, with armchairs and a love seat completing a circle. A coffee table in front of the sofa held a silver bucket with a bottle of champagne on ice. Two flutes rested on coasters beside the bucket.

"A drink before supper?" Koswalski suggested. And not waiting for an answer picked up the bottle, wrapped it in a towel while untwisting the wire cage around the cork and carefully leveraging the cork out. It came out with a short, sharp _pop_ but not with the stereotypical geyser of foam. He filled the two flutes, handing one to Kim. "A toast!" he proposed, "to our becoming better acquainted!" He raised the glass to his lips and down it.

Kim had eyed the glass from the moment she had seen it. As far as she could tell it looked like nothing untoward had been placed in the glass beforehand. Or while the champagne had been poured. She took the lightest of sips and set the glass back down. Ruffies were so easy to slip into things that she didn't want to chance getting drugged.

"Not to your liking?" Anton asked. He didn't look overly disappointed that she hadn't drunk more.

"Oh, it tasted just fine," she said, which was true, "but champagne goes straight to my head. I don't want to fall asleep on you in the middle of our date."

"Very sensible of you. I can see why you make such a trustworthy au pair. Your charges are, I suppose, asleep already?"

"You know how little boys are," she laughed. "They run around all day then fall over asleep the moment they stop."

"Than let us go down for dinner."

She agreed and he lead her out of the penthouse. She gave it a last look-over. It was sparsely finished. There would be few places the boys would have to look into before finding the passwords for Koswalski's Swiss bank accounts. And with those... She'd never have to rob a bank again. She'd have money out the wazoo.

Smiling at the thought, she tapped her left earring two times.


	3. Chapter 3

The Aztec room was large and dimly lit. An orchestra on one side played something slow and quiet. There was a large dance floor in front of the orchestra. No one was dancing at the moment. They were escorted to a table near the windows overlooking the now dark beach. Paintings and mosaics with Aztec designs and settings lined the wall. Anton held her chair out for her as she sat down, then joined on the opposite side of the table. No one had ever held her chair for her. It make her nervous because she expected the chair to be yanked out from under her at any minute.

Their waiter showed up a moment later and Anton ordered wine without bothering to ask what she wanted. The waiter had left tall glasses of ice water. Kim decided that would be good enough. When the wine arrived Anton made a deal of inspecting the cork from the bottle before allowing the waiter - or was that the wine steward? - to pour. Anton proposed another toast, and she sipped at the wine. It was a good vintage but rehab had left her with little taste for booze. They had dosed her up pretty heavily during the four months she was there with drugs that would make her sick if she drank any alcohol. And she had gotten so sick so many times that she, even two year out of rehab, two years without the pills, remained shy about drinking.

Another waiter came along with a basket of small loaves and the menus. Kim was eager to look through her's when Anton handed them back unopened. He ordered a salad and squab for her, whiskey and a lobster for himself.

And that was when the romance was over.

No matter how good looking, or suave, or well endowed he might be, no one, and she meant no one, ordered food for her. No one treated her like a toy with no volition of her own, no will, no interests, no tastes. After seeing the moppets wolfing down their steaks she was dying to have one herself. And not some tiny bird that looked like a pigeon, the vermin of the skies.

But this wasn't a date. This was business, not pleasure, so she kept a smile plastered on her face, and kept the conversation rolling. It was a lot easier, now with the anger growing inside to turn the conversation from her to him. What was he doing in Cancun? Did he live here? Was this really the best location to conduct "Big Science", shouldn't one do that at one of the larger universities of the world.

Anton Koswalski was happy to talk about himself. He told of his time as captain of his university rowing team. Kim had to stifle a laugh because the dossier the Guild had given on him never mentioned him participating in any sports and, in fact, it had mentioned that classmates had found him impossible to work with. He talked about his early days in business and his struggles to turn a small tech company into the giant it had become, never mentioning that he had done it as a patent troll.

When she asked him what got him interested in science his eyes light up and he chuckled to some untold joke.

"I could give you the Miss America answer - that I want to help humanity, end hungry, bring about world peace but those are silly answers.

"Silly?" Kim repeated, confused.

"Silly, because problems like those are really easy to solve. Take world hunger. That's caused not by a lack of resources but by an excess of demand. The easiest way to solver hunger is to decimate the Earth's population. Wipe-out two-thirds of humanity and there will be plenty of food to feed the remaining third. It's really quite simple but no one ever wants to consider that possibility. Science - Big Science - is all about asking the hard questions and looking for the simply answers that lies inside." He laughed as if to say I'm just kidding but the smile that flittered across his face seemed to say, "no, I'm not."

"But of course that would be unthinkable," he said after a beat, "so we have to think of harder ways to solve these problems."

The orchestra struck a waltz.

"Perhaps a dance while we wait for our food?" he suggested. She let him lead her out to the dance floor. Ballroom dancing wasn't her style, pogoing at raves was more like it, but she knew the steps at least. Koswalski held himself very posed and moved with a mechanical intensity that Kim guessed counted for something. She was surprised that he placed his arm around her waist and did not try to move it down as the music played on, like so many of her other dance partners had done. As long as he didn't step on her feet he was alright.

He swept her into a second dance and seemed to be enjoying himself more. His steps got smoother. He pulled her closer as they circled the dance floor. Then, saying that he didn't want their food to get cold he lead her back to their table. As soon as they sat down their waiter was at their side laying out their plates.

They ate in silence for a time, but as the meal as winding down Koswalski began asking her questions about her life as an au pair. Kim wasn't sure that he really cared but she had prepared stories for just this situation. Most were tales from her days as a high school babysitter, which was brief, mixed in with babysitting stories from her friends. She even retailed a bit from a popular movie, suspecting the Koswalski had never seen the teen comedy.

After a while she turned tables on him and asked him about his current researches. He demurred at first, explaining that it was all too complicated. He was probably right about that. Kim's knowledge of science began and ended with one semester of high school chemistry. She knew that pouring concentrated sulfuric acid on sugar produced a spectacular result but she couldn't tell you why.

Of course it only took an second prompt to get him started.

"I got interested in gravity during my under-graduate studies in physics. We were taught that there are only five forces in the universe, electricity, magnetism, the strong and the weak nuclear forces and gravity. And of these gravity was by far the weakest. Back in the Nineteenth Century James Maxwell demonstrated that electricity and magnetism were two side of the same force. electromagnetism. In the Twentieth Century the weak and strong nuclear forces - they are involved in the decay of sub-atomic particles - were also related to electromagnetism. But here we are in the Twenty-first century and physicists are no closer to unifying gravity with the other four forces. I felt that to be my calling. To solve the last unsolvable question of physics. Maybe," he paused here to chuckle, "it also had something to do with my early love for _Gulliver's Travels_."

"The story about Lilliput?" Kim asked, confused. What did an island of tiny people have to do with gravity?

"Oh, it's so much more than that. You should read it to your charges. I assure you they will love it. It is full of travels to magical lands, exciting adventures, eye-opening speculation about the nature of society. Gulliver travels not just to the island to Lilliput, but to Brobdingnag where the people there are tall as the Lilliputians were small. He also visits the land of the Houyhnhnms, where the horses are intelligent and its humans who are the dumb animals, but the story I always liked best was his visit to Laputa, the flying island. What a wonderful concept. One would never have to suffer the travails of travel when one could bring one's home along with them! Since that day I have dreamed of having my own flying island. So my fascinating with gravity was not strange after all.

"I spent the next twenty years of my life proving what gravity isn't, then for the last ten I have been discovering what gravity is."

Kim inadvertently frowned. Twenty years on this, ten years on that added up to thirty years and she was pretty sure one didn't graduate from college much before their mid-twenties. That meant Koswalski was in his late-fifties! He didn't look older than the late thirties. She was on a date with a "senior citizen!"

"So, do you have your flying island?" she asked, covering up for her momentary frown.

"Soon, soon. Electricity, magnetism, and the nuclear forces are all mediated by particles. That is, the force is exerted through an exchange of particles. But there is no particle of gravity. At most it can be described as a distortion of the space-time continuum, but what does that mean, exactly, right?"

Kim nodded, not knowing what else to do. She wished she was recording this in hopes that someday she might find someone who would be able to explain all this to her.

"What I determined is that gravity is a residual force, an imbalance between the electromagnetic and nuclear forces. Hence the weak nature of gravity."

"Weak? The last time I fell down skiing gravity didn't seem 'weak,' "

"Compared to the electromagnetic force, yes, gravity is.

"Once I identified gravity as a off-shot of electricity it has been child's place to develop an anti-gravity generator. "

"What a boon to humanity," Kim said, wondering why the Guild of Calamitous Intent was so opposed to this development, thinking about airplanes that wouldn't have to squeeze people in like so many sardines. Freight trains flying as the speed of sound. Travel to distant planets...

He came back with dreams of whole flying islands, aerial factories flying to anywhere in the world where wages are cheapest. Battleships of the sky so enormous that cities could be conquered overnight.

Where she thought of the things his invention could do for civilization, Koswalski thought only about the power such a device could give to its sole inventor. No wonder The Guild's dossier had concluded that the disruptions practical anti-gravity would make to the world economy would seriously jeopardize the balance of power between super-scientists and super-villains. She thought it was odd that the Guild of Calamitous Intend should worry about the fate of super-scientists. Weren't super-villains out to kill super-scientists? Why should they care how that happened. Then again if the world was going to be so messed up there there would be no Bloomingdales or Lord and Taylor to shop at... That alone was a good enough reason as any to take a whack at this guy.

When the waiter came by to see how they were doing Koswalski ordered dessert for the two of them. He ordered a light custard for her and a chocolate soaked torte for himself. Kim was about to correct the order then remembered that she was there to keep Koswalski preoccupied. She let the order stand instead of risking an argument and him storming off in disgust.

While waiting for their desserts Anton had frozen, his coat vibrating. "My apologizes," he said. "I must have forgotten to turn this thing off." He pulled out a cellphone and looked at the screen for a moment, then stabbed an annoyed finger at one of its buttons, ending the phone's quiet buzzing. He tapped his large onyx ring for a moment. "They can wait," he said, putting the phone away. She wondered for a moment who had called and what the call had been about but since Koswalski seemed to have put the matter out of mind she decided that the call didn't matter.

Nothing says a date is over like looking at one's watch but Kim was desperate to know if the boys had had time enough to search Koswalski's room. She was forced to glance at the wristwatch on the waiter as he delivered their desserts. They'd been out of the room for only about 90 minutes. Kim had promised them at least two hours so she took her time eating the custard, which admittedly was very good, but she envied even more the chocolate drenched morsels Anton was shoveling into his mouth.

After the dessert's were finished, they danced some more. Anton holding her a little closer this time around. Kim wondered what would happen if the orchestra broken into some modern music, Techno, perhaps. She loved the wild chaotic dancing. Dancing wasn't dancing if it didn't get the blood circulating, put a little sweat on the brow. It wasn't lady-like but then Kim had never been a lady. How would Koswalski react? Would he get in the spirit and wave his hands around like he just didn't care. Or would he stalk off the floor? Did he ever dance just to dance or was it all part of a pattern for seduction?

After a couple waltzes Kim pleaded the heat and asked to step out on the promenade. Anton readily agreed. Kim hoped that groping one's date's breasts in public was not part of any tradition in this part of Mexico.

The moon, a thin sliver, was following the sun below the horizon. It shed a faint glow on the waters of the bay. Lazy combers brought in a cooling, almost chilly breeze. They walked the length of the promenade a couple times before Koswalski leaned against the railing. "I don't get ashore as often as I'd like. I don't realize how much I enjoy these quiet moments. This is very nice."

"Ashore," Kim echoed. The dossier hadn't said anything about him living on a boat.

"Oh, you can't see it from here but roughly that way-" he point off slightly south by west '- fifty kilometers out is a small island I own. It's where I do my researches. Away from all the distractions of modern life."

"You own your own island?" Kim didn't have to fake the awe in her voice. She's never known someone who actually owned an entire island.

"It's not much, only about 15 hectares but it suits my needs." Kim was busy trying to convert hectares into acres. She was sure they had taught that stuff in school but since she couldn't think of a reason to know anything about hectares, kilometers and stuff she'd never learned it. It came to her that 15 hectares was maybe fifty acres. How big was an acre? she wondered.

She shivered as a gust of cool air blew past them. Anton saw her shiver and wrapped his arms around her. "Perhaps we could adjourn to my room for another drink or two. I can light the fireplace, warm you up nice and toasty."

"No, thank you," Kim demurred. "I should look back in on the boys. Sometimes they do wake up in the middle of the night. Still I want to thank you for dinner, it was excellent. And I really enjoyed the dancing. It was so different from the clubs I go to back in New York." She hoped he wouldn't ask her which clubs she referred to. She'd never been to New York. She was a west coast girl.

"Perhaps another night?" Anton asked hopefully.

"That would be nice." Actually if the boys had done their work properly they would gone by morning but it never hurt to pretend to agree.

As they turned back towards the hotel Kim tapped her earring three times.

][

Stepping off the elevator on the fifth floor Kim's spirits started rising with each step towards her suite. She had survived her date with the target and had not had to have sex with him either. Every step took her away from the playing acting and back to her normal self. Every step seemed a step towards freedom.

She stepped onto the room and froze. Kevin and Tim-Tom were seated on the couch angrily jamming their knifes into the exquisitely carved coffee table.

"Hey, we gotta to pay for that?" she snapped, grabbing the knife out of Kevin's hand. "Cutting up stuff like that will lead people to us. Before we check out make sure that table is in some other room."

"Not happy, mum!" Tim-Tom explained, jabbing his knife into the table forcefully.

"Couldn't find the papers, mum," Kevin explained.

Kim sank down on the couch next to the two midgets. "You couldn't find them? Did you look everywhere?"

"Of course we did," Tim-Tom growled. "We've been doing this since before you were in nappies. We know what we're doing."

"In the toilet tank? taped to the bottom of a drawer? Slipped under the carpet?"

"Yes, yes, and yes! We know what we're doing."

"But it had to be in the room!" She slammed Kevin's switchblade down on the table. It's blade caught in the wood and twisted under her hand, snapping the blade off near the hinge. "Damn!," she hissed, sucking at the scrape along the side of his hand.

"Hey, that was my best knife!" Kevin complained.

"What are we going to do next? Take a bunk? Find some other location to search?" Tim-Tom asked all businesslike.

"We'll have to play him along for a while longer while we figure where else the papers might be," Kim said. She felt drained, deflated by the failure of their mission. It was suddenly hard to think.

"We could hire some local muscle and stage an armed robbery. Maybe he had the papers with him all along."

"He was pressing up against me a lot tonight if he had any bundle on papers on him I think I would have felt them."

Tim-Tom licked his lips salaciously.

"It wouldn't hurt to make arrangements." Kevin suggested.

"Or we could just cut him up a bit," Tim-Tom smiled deliciously. "Put him in the hospital for a few months. Maybe cut his hamstring and force him to have reconstructive surgery. That'd put his research off for several months. I'm sure the Guild would like that just as well."

"I want that money," Kim said. "We're always going to be scrapping for money until we can lay our hands on his millions. I don't want to have to spend a life-time staging petty bank robberies to keep afloat."

"I like living in the lap of luxury," Kevin mused.

"We can still do the cutting if worse comes to worse," Tim-Tom reflected.

"Remember that guy we knife back in Baltimore?"

"Oh, year, he was squealing like a piggy as the blade went in. Not so much as it came out."

"Knock it off, you two!" Kim ordered. She wasn't happy about killing people - aside from Hank Venture, of course - and didn't like the way the moppets salivated when they talked about killing people. They loved talking about killing people. You'd think they were psychopaths or something.

They sat there in silent misery for a couple minutes then the hotel telephone buzzed. They looked at each other in surprise. Who would be calling them at this hour - or any hour?

Kim picked up the phone, "Hello?" she said warily.

"Ah, my dear Claudia, I am so happy that you are still up."

"Anton?" The moppets looked up interestedly. The scrambled over the couch to get next to the phone. She held a receiver an inch from her ear so they could hear both sides of the conversation.

"It is I. I had a wonderful thought while on the way up to my suite. Why don't you and your darling changes come out to my island for the day tomorrow? The motorboat leaves at dawn and could get you back well before nightfall. Your charges will enjoy it there. My island was a small but very well tended beach, there a reef where we can do some snorkeling. And there is a wonderful trail along the cliff. It will be very entertaining I assure you and we'll have a better chance to get to know each other. What do you say? Please say yes."

"Well, ah-" Kim stammered. She looked at the boys. They looked as doubtful as she felt. "Why, that sounds like a wonderful idea," she heard herself saying. "Wow, one's own private beach! That has to be awesome."

"Wonderful," Koswalski said in his suave voice. "Anytime after seven in the morning. I'll leave directions to find my slip with the concierge."

"Great. This will be so wonderful. I can't wait." She hung up.

"That was convenient," she said, confused.

"Too convenient," Kevin said

"We get a second go at him," she said justifying her decision.

"It's a trap," Tim-Tom declared.

"How could he suspect us?" Kim said. "In any case we can't afford to turn this down. If we bail on this mission I'm sure the Guild will be every bit as pissed as Koswalski would be if he knew we were trying to rob him."

"Well, I feel like we're being asked to stick our head into a wood chipper." Kevin said.

"Or into a lion's mouth." Tim-Tom agreed.

"Or he's just desperate to screw me," Kim said. "Let's sleep on it and see how it all sounds in the morning. Set your alarms for 6 am."

* * *

Chapters 2 and 3 were originally one long chapter which I decided ought to be broken into two. I hope you didn't found chapter two too static or chapter three too expository, but sometimes you have to take time to explain what's going on.

I spend a lot of time in this chapter remarking on the things that Kim doesn't know. I'm not trying to make she come off sounding dumb but pointing out that she is, after all, only 19, and not some 63 year old nerd with a life-long interest in trivia and Internet access (that would be me). There are a lot of things that Kim does know (like tens ways to break a neck without leaving a mark - from her Blackheart's training.) But not the cultural references of a previous generation.

Concentrated sulfuric acid dehydrates the sugar creating a lot of heat and leaving behind mostly carbon, which will foam up in a beaker.

Koswalski's physics lesson is mostly true. Scientists haven't given up on finding a particle that transfers the gravitation force or come up with an alternatively explanation.


	4. Chapter 4

The morning sun was still caressing the eastern horizon as Lady Au Pair hesitatingly walking along the slips of the Cancun harbor. Her disguise consisted of a pair of white shorts, neither too long or too short. A white Polo shirt with sunglasses awkwardly jammed into the breast pocket. Red canvas shoes offered a plash of color and a narrow matching belt encircled her waist. She had a straw bag over her shoulder that contained a change of clothing, a swimsuit, towel, some make-up and the dissembled parts of a plastic gun. The parts were scattered around in the bag where they would look innocuous. The shells were made of ceramic for greater strength. The firing pin was one of the studs holding the bags handles to the body.

She would pause every block or so to consult a slip of paper she was holding. Actually, she knew exactly where she was going having been down here two hours earlier.

The day had started with a preemptive shake by a little hand on her shoulder. Kevin adroitly avoided being impaled on the knife she kept under her pillow. "Time to get up, mum, we're working on a plan."

Kim slipped the knife back under the pillow as she shook the sleep from her head. What was Kevin doing in her bedroom? How was in her bedroom since she had jammed a chair under the doorknob last night when she retired. She cast a wary eye at her door. It lay propped up in the doorway, the hinges neatly sliced off. The chair was tumbled a few feet away. She wondered how they had been able to saw through the hinges from the other side without waking her. But that was the sort of thing her murderous moppets were good at.

"You could have knocked," she complained since complimenting the boys always made them hard to manage for days on end. "Now you've got to replace the door before we leave."

"Knocking would be too easy. Anyway, get your butt moving we're got a reccon mission to run before you head out to see Mr. I'm-too-rich-for-my-own-good."

"Reccon?" When she had gone to bed none of them had known what to do next. The Swiss bank account access codes were not where they expected to find them. Then out of the blue, their target, Anton Koswalski, called to suggest a day trip to his island research center. It was too good to be true. It was almost surely a trap but it was also their best hope for getting those access codes. "What's the plan?"

"Get moving. We'll explain when we get out there." Kevin turned and walked out the door.

She sighed and grabbed the robe next to her bed, pulled it under the blankets and around her before slipping out of bed. She was going to have to give serious thought to wearing pajama if she was going to be working with moppets around her all the time.

She grabbed some clothes and dressed in the bathroom.

When she came out Kevin was wearing a Playtime Ninja costume for ages 3 through 5. She had put on a set of black jogging sweats, rolled her red hair up into a bun and tied a black scarf over it. Her jogging shoes were old and very dirty. She was dressed like a cat burglar but with the plausible deniability of a Yankee running enthusiast.

Kevin lead her around to the stairs. They descended into the basement then climbed up another set of stair to the loading dock hidden away from both sea and countryside. They walked a couple blocks north, turned east a block and there was Tim-Tom sitting on top of a car waiting for them. The car was idling smoothly. Kim got into the driver's sit and jockeyed out of the parking spot. Kevin and Tim-Tom were surprising apt at driving despite being midgets the size of small children. One worked the gas and brakes while the other steered. But when Lady Au Pair was around, she drove. It was just easier that way.

Tim-Tom gave her directions and they were soon amid the wharfs and docks of the commercial harbor. They left the car running in a open spot and walked a couple blocks over and down to the harborside. Kevin pulled out his binoculars from his Ninja-Roar backpack and trained them on a pier running out to several large vessels. "There," he pointed to the third ship from the end. That's it." He handed the glasses to Kim.

When Anton Koswalksi had said "motorboat" she had expected something fairly small, maybe a cabin cruiser for 4 to 6 people, maybe a cigarette boat. This was twice as big as what she expected. And it was busier than she expected at 5-fricking-thirty in the AM. She couldn't tell what they were wheeling on board the boat. It looked like canned goods enough to feed an army.

"I see three-four crew. The rest look to be locals," Tim-Tom was saying.

"How can you tell," Km asked, "they all looked to be wearing casual clothes."

"Yeah, but the crew's clothes are clean and pressed."

Kim looked again. "So they are." She lowered the binoculars. "So what's this plan of yours?"

"A big boat like this has got to have lots of small places where guys like ourselves can hide. We get on board before it leaves, conceal ourselves while you make nice with Big Daddy. You keep him occupied for the afternoon while we case the island and search for the access codes. Easy-peasy." Kevin explained.

"They won't know what hit them," Tim-Tom added.

"But he specifically invited you two along," Kim reminded them.

"All the more reason for us _not_ to go along," Kevin growled. "He suspects us. I don't know how, we didn't leave a thing out of order to him to find, but he wants us together. So we stay apart."

"We'll shadow you all the way, like ticks on a dog. If something starts to get hinky, we'll be there," Tim-Tom added.

"What am I supposed to tell him why you two didn't come?"

"It's your mission, mum. We figured you could deal with that yourself."

"And the car your stole?"

"Drive it back to the hotel," Tim-Tom said.

"But not too near the hotel," Kevin interrupted.

"Wipe it down and forget about it." Tim-Tom finished.

"And you're staying here?"

"We'll be on board by the time you get back."

And so she did. She went back to the hotel, took a shower, applied her make-up and dressed casually, picked up the directions from the concierge and made we way to the harbor. She even made a point of asking directions from a couple seaman she passed along the way. It was seven-thirty when she approached the gangway to Koswalski's boat.

A crew member was standing at the foot of the gangway. "Miss Mosconi?" he asked as Kim approached.

"That's me."

"And guests, two children?"

"They couldn't make it."

He didn't bother to ask why. "Come this way," he said and lead her aboard the ship. The boat was about a hundred feet long, with a cabin running the length of the ship. In the front a second floor housed what Kim assumed was the bridge. The back half of the boat was windowless with a couple large doors to portside. Kim recalled that this was where all the cargo had been loaded when she and the moppets had been watching the ship earlier. Towards the bow the cabins walls were freshly painted with numerous large portholes and stairs running to the roof. The crew man lead her up the stairs to the upper deck. A large patio had been built on the roof of the cabins. There were chairs, chaise lounges, a wet bar, shuffle board, even an above-deck hot tub. A walkway lead around the the front of the ship, but the crewman just left her sitting at the bar. A moment later Anton Koswalski stepped through a door on the back of the bridge.

"My dear Miss Mosconi! I am so glad that you could make it today." He bent down and kissed her on the lips. "Come let me show you around my little boat. But, wait! What of your darling little boys? I was so hoping they could come today."

"Well, you know boys," she began. She had been watching Anton closely from the moment he came out of the bridge. He seemed the same suave man he did the night before. Confident, self-satisfied, a little arrogant. There was no hint that he was suspicious of her in any way. Either he was an even better actor than she or - he was no more than he claimed to be. She had spent some time trying to devise a story was sounded plausible enough. "They were sleeping sounding when I went to check on them after that wonderful dinner we had last night. But they must have woke up around 2 and ordered ice cream from room service. A lot of ice cream. Anyway they were as sick as dogs this morning so I thought it was best to leave them in the resort's KinderCare. A day's rest and they should be all right. I just hate to see what the room service charged are going to be." she finished with a depreciative smile.

Anton murmured that it was such a shame that they couldn't make it, then went to the crewman who had been hovering next to the ladder all this time. He was a tall, lanky Scandinavian type. He reminded Kim a little of that guy at the Ventures who was always washing his car. Triana had said he was the Venture's bodyguard. Koswalski whispered instruction to the man. The crewman went forward to the bridge. Moments later the sounds of a large diesel engine rumbled up from below. A couple of the crew went down the gangway, loosening ropes and throwing them on board. As soon as the last man was back on board, an officer - he wore a sailors' visor instead of a general baseball cap - pressed a lever at the side of the gangway. Hydraulics raised the walkway vertically.

The boat backed away from the slip for a moment, it's prow swinging out into the harbor before, with a lurch, the propeller reversed directions and pushed them forward. Kim found all this activity fascinating. But also a little disturbing. She hadn't see any sign of the moppets and if they planned on getting aboard their chance to do so had escaped them. Of course they had said they would be on board and they tended to do what they said. But she hadn't seen hide nor hair of them. She could hardly expect them to pop up and give her the hi-sign but she would have felt a lot better just now if they had. She had had combat training with Molotov Cocktease's Blackhearts assassination forces. She figure she could take on any two or even three men on this ship, but not the whole crew. Her only hope was to keep on playing her part and hope that Anton Koswalski had never seen through it.

"Ever been a sea-going vessel before?" Anton asked as he joined her at the railing. He held out a fruit drink and Kim absent-mindedly took a sip.

"No, the Townhouses tended to fly wherever they went."

"Then this will be quite an experience for you." He paused, considering his words. "The waves outside the harbor are a lot higher than they are in here. Travel gets a little - more - rough. Some people have trouble adjusting for that. We have some drammanie in the first aid chest behind the bar. And - the pails you see along the railings - they're not for decoration."

"I hope I won't have to use them. Do you entertain much out here?"

"Not as much as I used to. Things are coming to a head in my research so I haven't had the time to put together parties like I used to. But when I saw you, I knew I had to make an exception." He picked up her free hand and brought it to his lips. He kissed it two - three times slowly. "You are the most remarkable woman I have met in a long time." He smiled with a mouthful of perfect teeth.

Kim smiled back thinking all the while that there were two ways to interpret "remarkable."

Kim was fascinated with the boat pulling out of its slip into the harbor. The farther away they got from land the slower the boat seemed to move. Kim knew they were going as faster as ever, judging from the wake rolling off the bow but as the distance from the land increased the perception of speed dwindled. The boat seemed to go even slower as they cleared the harbor and headed out into the open sea. As the boat left the shelter of the harbor it began to roll a bit unpredictably, but Kim found that as long as she didn't focus on the ship's bouncing it didn't affect her much. Still when Anton offered some breakfast she only nibbled on a bagel.

The night before she had looked up 'kilometer' on the Internet and found that it was about two-thirds of a mile. So Koswalski's island was about thirty miles off shore. She wasn't sure how fast the boat was traveling but she was pretty sure it wasn't thirty miles an hour so they'd have an hour and a half or so before reaching the island. She was feeling pretty nervous since she didn't really have a plan once they reached the island. At the same time she wished they trip was over since the waiting at this point was ever more nerve-wracking.

After the breakfast Koswalski took her on a tour of the boat. There was a large room under the bridge which looked like a dining room of sorts. Anton called in a saloon, which caused Kim to laugh. The only saloon's she'd ever known were seedy dives that served liquor and only liquor. A hallway lead to a half-dozen cabins. Only Anton called the hall a companion. The rest of the boat were holds and the engine-room, which Anton assured Kim were dirty and uninteresting. The crew made a point of disappearing whenever Koswalski approached. Apparently the boss didn't like to see the help.

He took her back up to the bridge and introduced her to the Captain, a Raul Garcia. The captain was dressed in white with a white captain's hat covered in a fair amount of gold braid. He was stranding next to a man in the black dress of the crew holding a small wheel firmly in hand. It hardly seemed large enough to steer a big boat like this. Kim had expected one of the big spoked wheels you see in pirate movies.

They went out to the patio on the upper deck and settled into a pair of chaise lounges. Koswalski had suggested a game of chess but Kim had to confess that she didn't know how to play. They talked a bit more about each other. Kim was at her wit's end coming up with new stories. The lack of life experiences was beginning to tell on her. A nineteen year-old former party girl just didn't have a lot of stories that would be interesting to a near-senior citizen.

Eventually a smudge appeared in the horizon ahead of them. Anton announced that they were nearly there. Gradually it grew into a black lump rising almost vertically out of the sea. Even at this distance it didn't look as friendly and inviting as Koswalski had made it seem the night before. Kim was curious about a series of grey spots running around the island about half way between sea and crest. They were regularly spaced and seemed to circle the entire island. The rest of the island was a greyish black, granite or the like, but these dots were the color of new concrete.

The boat swung around the island to the west side and started pulling in. The cliffs here dipped somewhat and a shelf of rock rose out of the ocean forming a passable landing spot. There didn't appear to be any beach, however small that might be.

As the distance to the island narrowed Kim could see the whitish blisters on the sides of the cliff better. The were round, nearly semi-spherical with a broad slit along the face at the center. An observation gallery Kim wonder then noticed one protrusion had a pair of tubes extending through the slit, though they were being rapidly retracted.

"Are those gun mounts?" Kim said out loud.

"Why, yes," Anton answered in a steely voice. "How astute of you to notice. One must protects one's secrets from a rapacious world, after all. He who controls gravity controls the world, after all. But why would an innocent Au Pair know about fortifications and gun platforms, if indeed you are an Au Pair?"

"What are you talking about?" Kim insisted, innocently, even as a voice inside her head was shrieking "busted."

"Your charges, those young boys, they are not at the resorts' KinderCare facility."

"Of course they are, I left them there this morning before coming out here."

"I checked neither you or anyone looking like you brought deposited anyone at the KinderCare registration."

"You checked?" Kim said indignantly.

"Of course I checked. Some one entered my room last night while you were being so charming.

"You were burglarized? Oh, my god! That's terrible! But where are my boys. I definitely left them at the KinderCare. If they're not there then they must have been kidnapped. Oh, my god! Kidnapped. We've got to turn back and alert the police. Who knows what will happen to them!"

"Oh, you are good," he purred. "OSI, yes? They they have been after me for some time. I hadn't realized how ably I had been set up. While you distracted me with tales of babysitting your associate run through my room looking for something. Whatever he were looking for wasn't there. I never leave anything important in my room, I know how many enemies I have.

"OSI? You think I'm a spy?" Kim declared indignantly.

"Only an agent of OSI knows that they are a spy organization. You just gave yourself away."

"What? Are you insane?" she asked, desperately trying to hold on to her cover story. "Where are my boys? The Townhouses will be insane knowing they're missing!"

"You are good." He nodded and suddenly an arm clamped itself around Kim mouth with a damp smelling towel jammed over her mouth. She recognized the sweetish, chemical smell for chloroform. She tried a backwards kick with her foot but the blond giant was standing to one side. She tried to stomp on his foot but missed. The man was a pro at this. She tried swirling out from under his constraining arm but he just squeezed her tighter. She tried another backkick but now her wind was gone. She couldn't resist inhaling any longer.

The fumes went choking down into her lungs. She struggled some more but each time weaker than before. Her last image before passing out was of Anton Koswalski, insufferable arrogant, smiling at her.


	5. Chapter 5

For some time time Kim had been aware of a dull headache and nausea centered in her stomach. She felt dull, sleepy, not really connected with the world. Then something cold and hard pressed against the inside of her thigh and pushed up towards her groin. There was the snick of a scissors. Kim's eyes snapped open with the fear that she was being vivisected.

Anton Koswalski hovered over her, cutting away her shorts. He had changed into a spandex bodysuit of pale blue with a large, complex design on the chest that resolved itself into the image of a cloud centered in the symbol for atomic power. Not a cloud, she realized, but a floating island. Spandex is painfully unforgiving for most people who don't have rock hard abs and cellulite free hips. Koswalski had obviously spent a lot of time getting fit enough to wear his uniform.

She was laying on a metal table, tilted up about 45 degrees. Her feet, she could see, were handcuffed to the corners of the table, and from the strained position of her arms she guessed they, too, were handcuffed to the upper corners of the table.

"What are you doing?" she demanded as Koswalski sawed his way closer to her maidenhead.

"I'm removing your clothes, of course." he replied with something of a leer in his voice.

"Couldn't 've you just asked?"

"We're all past the 'asking' stage." As he neared the doubled up fabric around the zipper he angled the scissors away and angled up towards the waistband.

"I just bought those, they cost ninety bucks!" Kim complained.

"That's OK, you won't be wearing them again."

She didn't like the sound of that.

"Is this how you treat all your guests to your island?" she asked. Her memory was fuzzy around the time she was suffocated with chloroform. She thought _maybe_ Koswalski had accused her of being a spy but it seemed best to carry on with the story that she was just an innocent au pair.

For a moment Koswalski didn't reply. He put down the scissors for a moment to pull off her red pleather belt. He set it on the large desk near them, picked up the shears again and finished cutting up through the waistband. He pulled down the edges to look at her panties. "White," he signed. "Mata Hari wore black, I'm told. This is so ... ordinary." He walked around to the other side of the table and ran the scissors up under the other leg of her shorts.

"Guest, no, Miss Mosconi - if that is your name - this is how I treat spies."

"Spy? I'm not a spy!"

"Oh, please. I've had my security boys working all night to identify you. You, we couldn't find anything on but the two boys you claim to be the nanny of, match the description of a notorious pair of cutthroat murderers: The murderous moppets of Lady Au Pair. Now the picture we have of Lady Au Pair shows a much older woman." he put down the scissors and picked a photograph laying on the large in the center of the room. The picture was of Dr. Girlfriend from maybe ten years before. She looked beautiful as ever, and hardly looked like an "older" woman.

The sense of sick from the chloroform in her stomach was replaced by a sharp pit of acid. He knew who she was. She was helpless before him. And he was doing, she didn't know what, to her clothes. Somehow she never expected that being a super-villain might be life-threatening.

Kim struggled against her bonds. The Blackhearts had taught her a way to snap some handcuffs by twisting the links in a certain way then pulling on them but she couldn't move her hands around to catch the links in a bind.

"Please, don't bother struggling. It won't help and it might cause me to scratch you with my scissors. And I'd hate that. I hate having sex with a disfigured woman."

"Sex?"

"Why not? I think I deserve it once I've shown the world the power of my platform and set up my base of operation for world dominion."

"I don't think I'm willing to go along with that."

"No one cares what you think. And after I get tired of using you, I might let some of my closest minions have a crack at you. Got to keep their morale up.

"You plan to rape me?"

"Yes," Koswalski's voice was suddenly steely. "I plan to rape you till you're begging for mercy, but I will show you no mercy. No mercy, ever! - for spies. And when I can't think of how else to do to you... the ocean is deep and wide. You, Miss Mosconi, Miss Lady Au Pair, whatever, will never be seen again!"

"Doctor Gravity?" a voice over a loudspeaker called. "We're at T-minus 60 minutes. We need your input before we begin the severance procedure."

"Duty calls," he signed. He finished making the second cut on her pants. They lay flat on the table. Grabbing the flap with the zipper he yanked hard and pulled the pants out from under her. He dropped them on his desk. He laid the scissors on them of them.

As he walked over to a bank of computer monitors Kim had time to take a glance around the room. It looked like a overly large executive office. Wood paneled walls. Lots of built in book shelves, cabinets and drawers. A desk the size of four desks pushed together filled the center of the room. A large conference table sat to the right of that, covered with rolls of maps or blueprints, Kim couldn't tell which. The computer workcenter was on the left and straight ahead looking out into the ocean was a vast plate-glass window. Oddly, a ship's wheel was mounted in front of the window, as if this were the bridge of a ship.

Anton had removed the large onyx ring from his finger and was now holding it in his hand. He gave it a strong twist. The insert square of onyx twisted slightly. He twisted it some more and it came off in his hand. He tapped the ring and a small black square fell out of it into his hand. Kim was unsure what that was, microfilm maybe, though that seemed terrible dated.

Anton walked over to one of the monitors and pressed in on a section, a small piece of plastic was ejected. He fitted the tiny square in his hand into the plastic frame and reinserted back into the monitor. A mini-SD chip, Kim marveled. No wonder the boys hadn't been able to find anything. He had the chip with him all along, with the bank account access codes and lord knows how much other information. She could see him flipping through several screens of forms, tabbed down several lines before typing into the box. Thought of the boys was reassuring because, if all had gone as planned they would be lurking somewhere on the island and could eventually rescue her. Then again, the way this mission was going they had been already caught, executed and it would only be time before she joined them in the drink.

"Devices have been armed." Koswalski spoke into a microphone on the desk.

"Confirmed, Doctor Gravity. Devices have been armed. Detonation in twenty seconds."

"You'll love this," Anton was saying as he strode back to the tale she was manacled to. He picked up the scissors and began cutting apart her polo shirt. He seemed to have fun making a detour around her breasts. Suddenly the island was rocked by a tremendous explosion. Then a second, a third, a fourth, six in all.

"What was that?" Kim demanded, though Koswalski had been unperturbed by the massive shaking of the island.

"Doctor." the voice came again through loudspeakers. Seismology reports that separation has been successful."

"Good, good," Koswalski muttered. He went back to the computer workstation and said into the microphone, "you are authorized to bring power up to 40% and engage the main drive at minimum power."

"There are two things needed for a proper flying island," he aid as he returned to cutting up her shirt. "One is an island constructed entirely of a strong material like basalt. This island is essentially an entire magma plume that hardened millennia ago. It's solid basalt, without a fracture anywhere in it. Once I saw the geology report I know I had found my Laputa. The other necessity for a flying island is that the island no longer be connected to the Earth. My teams have successfully detonated explosive charges along deep tunnels which have split Laputa from the planet. And soon my gravity engines will float it into the air. And then you'll discover what those gun emplacements are for."

Koswalski seemed to be impatient now with cutting her clothes, perhaps wanting to get it done before any more interrupts came along. He finished cutting up one side of her polo shirt then cut from the sleeve to the collar on the other side, opening up the shirt so he could pull it off. He took a couple quick cuts at her panties, then pulled them out from under her.

He walked back up to the head of the table and stroked Kim's head. She couldn't suppress the shudder than ran through her body. Separating out a lock of her hair he snipped it off and laid it on his desk. "By this token I shall always remember you."

"You know what makes an even better memento?" Kim suggest, "keeping me around. Why try to remember what I was like when you can have the real thing any time."

"You wish to be my consort? How noble of you! But the position of consort has already been filled."

"You have a girlfriend?"

"No, I've been too busy for anything like that. But once I'm emperor of the world I will have my pick of consorts. I was thinking of Miley Cyrus or maybe Amanda Byrnes, they seem very cute. Or maybe that Selena Gomez. What do you think. Which would be best for a man of my status?"

"You're old enough to be their grandfathers."

"Maybe I'll have all three. What Emperor doesn't have his own harem?"

"Doctor Gravity," the loudspeaker sounded again. "We're having a little trouble balancing the energy outputs. We really need your help down in Mission Control."

With an exasperated sigh, Koswalski walked back over the microphone on the workstation. "I'll be there in a minute." he told them.

"You would think a crop of PhD candidates would be able to do something as simple as balancing an eleven-dimensional equation. It's not that hard." He looked down at Kim. "I think I've time enough to finish here. He picked up the scissors and snipped through her bra straps then cut the band along her side. He pulled her bra off, leaving Kim stark naked on the table. He wadded up her bra and held it to his nose, inhaling noisily,. "Ah, scent of a woman," he said softly.

"Wait till night, it's more like stench of a woman," Kim said.

"Well, I must be off," he said, stroking the side of her breast. "Those idiots can't tie their own shoes without me to show the way." He draped her bra over Kim's face. "I shall leave you here to enjoy the show. It should be entertaining in an hour or so. Then come this evening We - no, I - shall have so much fun with you."

He walked swiftly away. After a moment a door closed and Kim was alone in the strange room.

][

She struggled with her bonds for a while before admitting that there was no way she was going to break them. Maybe if she had the kind of shoulders that Brock Sampson, the old Venture's bodyguard, had she could have broke them. She was a lot stronger than the average girl because of the training regimen that the Blackhearts had put her through, but it just wasn't enough.

She watched the clouds scud across the sky for a bit, then smiled at the thought that came to her. In all those spy movies she used to watch there always came a point where the spy was captured by the villain, put into some kind of death-trap and then the villain walked away, not wanting to see the spy killed. And of course the hero always has some gimmick, a trick up his sleeve that allowed him to escape and thwart the villain. She looked around for the giant cutting laser that seemed appropriate to the table she was manacled to. There was none, of course, nor did she have any gimmick that would allow her to get out of her handcuffs. If only she had a small bit of metal so she could try picking the locks. She had been pretty good at picking locks even before training under the Blackhearts. But she had no little bits of metal.

Growing tired of smelling her own sweat, Kim was about to shake her bra off her face when a thought caused her to freeze in place. This was one of her under-wire bras. Sewn into the base of the cup was a thin, tough length of wire, to shape and mold her breasts as they rested inside the cup. If she could get one of those under-wires out of the bra...

Carefully she shook her head until she could grab an edge of it in her teeth. She tried whipping her head back and forth, hoping to grab the end in her hand.

It was too short.

Carefully - now that she had a plan she could not afford to accidentally let the bra slip out of her teeth - Kim worked her teeth back and forth, using the grinding motion to slide the bra along. When she got to one of the cups she stopped and thought for a moment. The underwire has been securely sewed into the fabric. In time the wire will sometimes cut through the fabric and then the bra has to be thrown away because the wire would poke into sensitive flesh. But this wasn't an old bra. Like the rest of the clothes she wore that day it had been specially purchased for the mission and hadn't been worn before. She could try to use her hand to work the wire through the fabric before trying to pick the handcuff but her hands were already starting to feel a little numb from being held in such an unusual position. Maybe she should try chewing through the stitching first so the wire would be ready to pull out when she got it to her hand.

Working carefully with lips and tongue she wadded the cup into her mouth then spit it out so only the wire side of the cup remained. She tongued it around, getting a nasty taste of her antiperspirant in the process. She couldn't get a good grip on the wire so had to chew as best she could. She had to pause one or twice as the muscles in her jaws started to spasm. Each second she had to wait for her muscles to recover was an agony. At any moment Koswalski might return from whatever task he had been called away for. If she could not get free before he returned it would mean an unpleasant and painful death.

Finally there was a metallic taste in her mouth. Feeling around with her tongue she could feel the sharp end of the underwire. She dropped her head against the table with a deep sigh of relief, then went back to working the bra slowly through her mouth until she could feel the end of the band that Koswalski had cut.

She pulled her head as far off the table as she could, rolled her head to the left that snapped it around. She could feel the far end of it hit her wrist. Her fingers made a stab for it but it was not near enough to grab.

She jerked her head back, bringing the bra back to her left side. This time she waves her head back and forth carefully a couple times before putting her full force into a swing. The end hit her palm and started to slither away but her fingers clenched, pinning the end to her palm. She twisted her palm to pull the bra further out then made a quick snatch. She got the end in her fingers, holding it securely.

It was a moment's work to walk the bra through her fingers until she felt the damp, chewed edge of the cup. She rolled the cup around in her fingers until she found where the wire poked through. She pushed more of it out then grasped the other end firmly. It wasn't easy twisting her arm around so that her fingers could touch the handcuff. She found the slot for the cuff's key and pushed the stiff wire inside. She waggled the wire around until she felt the first ward and pushed it out of the way. There were two wards in this design of handcuff, so she was half way there.

She felt for the second ward, being careful not to let the first one slip back into place. Her hand was starting to cramp something fierce when she found the second ward and pushed it out of the way. Carefully she pulled on the cuff and it slid out of the lock.

It took Kim a full minute to restore circulation and flexibility to her liberated hand. She rolled over on her side and slipped the wire into the cuff on her other hand. It took her only a couple seconds now with her freed hand to opening the second cuff.

She was bending down to free her feet when she heard a choked gasp and "Mum!"

Kevin stood in the doorway looking shocked for the first time she he'd started working for her.

"Where were you an hour ago when I could have used you?" she snapped to cover her embarrassment. Damn the luck, she actually let one of her pervo-voyeur moppets see her naked. She was never going to live this down.

"Trying to get off the boat, mum," Kevin said, pulling the door locked and setting the lock. "Security is surprisingly tight"

Kim sat up and tried to reach down to her feet but Kevin was there in an instant, producing a standard handcuff key from a pocket. He busied himself unlocking her feet. He picked up the bra she had dropped on the table when she had heard his exclamation. He saw the exposed wire. "You freed your hands with this? I'm impressed."

"Find me some clothes," Kim ordered as she hopped off the table, nearly falling to her knees before regaining strength enough to walk. She went over to the computer workstation and tapped the "CNTL" key. The screen lit up to the command line prompt. Kim breathed a sigh of relief. Anton had grown careless with his own computer security. He had assumed that with 30 miles of ocean and a couple hundred armed guard surrounding him he didn't need to lock down his computer when not in use. She tried to remember how to call up a directory listing.

"Come here," she snapped. "Koswalski has all his codes and passwords on a mini-SD chip that was hidden in that big onyx ring he was always wearing. He had to use it to set off those explosions and it's still in here. You know these computer systems better than I do. You drain he money into our accounts. I'll look for something to wear."

Kevin came over and they exchanged places. Kim pointed to the card-reader slot, then left him as the black dwarf started rattling his fingers over the keyboard.

"Where's Tim-Tom?" she asked while opening various drawers and doors.

"We flipped a coin. He went down; I went up."

"I hope he's being careful. The Guild's about a year off from their calculations. Koswalski isn't preparing to build a weapon of world conquest. he already built it. I gather today is to be its first test run."

"What kind of weapon are we talking about. mum?"

Before Kim could answer there was a lurch that send her staggering against a wall. Kevin grabbed hold of the workstation.

Kim ran to the vast picture window facing out to the sea. The horizon was pitching about drunkenly. Looking down to the ocean she could see the motor boat that had brought them out here. It had backed off a couple miles and was waited now bobbing in the sea. Only every second it was getting smaller and smaller. It was her only clue that the island was rapidly ascending into the sky.

"Holy F-!" she whispered in awe.

"Mum?" Kevin, still as the keyboard, asked.

"He's turned this into a flying island. He's calling himself Doctor Gravity now, and he has a fully operational flying island. And there must be a dozen large gun emplacements on the island. He must have the biggest, most heavily armed battleship in history!"

Kevin left the workstation and joined her at the window. He looked out at the distant waves of the sea racing past them. "Crikey!"

"Crickey? You're not Australian." She knew for a fact that he'd grown up in Detroit."

"Like saying F- twenty times in a row is better?" He shook his head. "Looks like we're heading back to shore."

"And fast." Kim noticed that the waves were streaking past them. "Wonder where's he's going?"

"Eye on the prize, mum," Kevin said. He walked back to the computers.

Kim watched him, confused. He hadn't been staring at her butt, or her boobs, or her crotch. That was so unlike him.

"Koswalski could be back at any minute," Kevin was saying. "I think I saw a bathroom near the door. They might have some towels you can use."

She found the bathroom, a large room with sink, commode, extra-large multi-jet shower and a series of built in closets. In one were assorted towels and face clothes. But next to it was a wardrobe with a half-dozen copies of Koswalski's Doctor Gravity suits. She debated for an instant whether wrapping herself in a towel was a better idea, then grabbed one of the spandex costumes and pulled it on. There were full-length mirrors in the door of the wardrobe, and along the walls of the bathroom. There were an infinite regression of her in the blue suit. As expected it was stretched tight across her butt and hung limply at the shoulders. There was a pile of matching Captain's hat on the shelf about. She balled up her long red hair and jammed one of the hats over it. With a final look in the mirror, she left to join her moppet.

"How's it going?" she asked

"If I've done the math right, mum, at the moment you'd currently the 104th richest woman in the world."

"Say what?"

"I could be wrong. I get confused when there are so many zeros involved," Kevin explained. "But we've got practically every cent Doctor Cookoo had."

"Good. Can you raise Tim-Tom. We've done out duty to the Guild. Now it's time to scram."

Explosions punctuated her comments.

They rushed to the window. Cancun lay below they and Koswalski's flying island was busily shelling it.

* * *

The bra scene was originally a fragment for a story called "Kim's vacation" - The idea is that a bored Kim has Gary kidnapped and brought to Rio where she's still waiting out her prohibition on Arching Hank. She thinks they'll have a couple weeks of fun, sun and crazy ex. But Gary is really committed to being the Venture's bodyguard and keeps trying to escape. Leading her to handcuff him to a table and after some unwanted attention leave, dropping her bra on his face to "remember" her. Since I doubt that I'm going to write that story and because it seemed better placed here, here it is.


	6. Chapter 6

Lady Au Pair placed her ear against the door and listened, she couldn't hear anyone outside. Cautiously she pulled the door open. She gave a hitch to the oversize uniform she was wearing in lieu of any other clothes.

"Let's go."

She slide out the door and flattened herself against the opposite wall. Kevin strode out behind her and turned left. "This way," he said, strolling down the middle of the hall. It took him a second to realize he was by himself. He turned back.

Kim was slowly sidling towards him.

"What are you doing?" he asked, adding "mum" as a an afterthought.

Kim looked both ways before answering. "Trying to be ... ah ... inconspicuous," she faltered.

"Maybe if you were in a dark ally. Here you've got to act like you own the place."

Kim slowly peeled herself from the wall. She could feel her face turning beet-red. "In my defense, I just escaped a fate worse than death. Literally worse than death. I'm feeling a bit traumatized."

"Technically speaking," Kevin said over his shoulder, "until your ass is safely planted on the ground. you haven't completely escaped whatever it was Doctor Gravity was planning for you. Uh, mum."

"Shoot!" Kim muttered, catching up to the African-American midget with a couple long strides. Despite her Blackhearts training she was having trouble controlling her jumpiness. "Like I own the place, yeah. Since I'm wearing one of Dr. Gravity's costumes I guess in a way I suppose I do. You know, this whole thing kind of reminds me of the first time I tried buying liquor with a fake ID. Confidence - confidence was everything. Only getting busted with a fake ID just got you some time in Juvie. Getting caught here means death! It is making it hard for me to think..."

"Now you're babbling."

"Sorry'"

"And strutting. Just walk normally."

"Right. Did you get hold of Tim-Tom," she asked, trying to deflect the conversation away from her rank amateurishness.

"Yes, mum. He went down while I went up. He found the generators and was rigging explosives. I suggested he might want to wait until we were not a mile in the air."

"That would be awkward. Since we've done everything the Guild asked of us, I'm all for getting the hell out of here. Are we meeting up with Tim-Tom somewhere?"

Kevin pulled out several sheets of paper. "Luckily, I found schematics for the base here while I was using the computer. We're here." He pointed to a spot on one sheet of paper. "Tim-Tom's at sub-5, which is a sub-sub-sub-basement." He flipped through a couple sheets and pointed to a spot there. "I told him to met us here, on the surface." More pages turned and he pointed to a spot Kim kind of recognized. At least the sheet showed topographical features with an irregular border that resembled the shape of the island. The page was labeled "G"

"What's there that we can use?"

"Looks like a runway and hanger. We should find something useful there. Maybe a plane."

"How 'bout we pick up the pace. The sooner we get off this island the sooner I'll be able to breathe." Kim said. She started to lengthen her stride then almost stopped in her track. "Oh, God, we've got company." A group of minions were coming at them down the hall. They wear a variation of the sky-blue spandex jumpsuit Kim was wearing but the logo on the chest was smaller and simpler in outline. They also had wide orange bands on their sleeves. Several were holding clipboards while other were reading over stapled sheets of print-outs.

"Keep a grip," Kevin advised. "They're techies and you're in the boss' costume. Stand up straight, shoulders back, chest out ... well, maybe not 'chest out'. Try not to bobble too much."

Kim straightened up, and kept her head down, trying to look thoughtful and preoccupied as they passed the group of men. There were a few murmured "Good day, sir" and the men swept past them. None of them had so much as glanced at her.

"Low level minions never want to be noticed by the boss. That leads to promotions and suicidal missions."

"Oooh-kay. Now can we run?"

"Soldiers dead ahead," was all Kevin said.

There were three of them, also in the sky-blue spandex, only with black arm bands, helmets and a holstered guns on their belt. They were jogging in single-file.

"Sir!" the lead soldier barked, stopping in front of Kim. "Unit twelve has detected sabotage near the power plant. We're going to invest- hey, you're not..." A knife in his throat ended the conversation. The two remaining men reached for their guns. Kevin had pulled another knife from his clothes and sliced at the next man on his feet. This situation Kim understood, it was something she'd practised with the Blackhearts. She swung a foot and knocked the last man to the ground, brought her foot around again and clocked him on the chin. When he tried to move she jammed a foot down on the fork in his body and ground away until the man started vomiting.

"A knife would have been faster," Kevin remarked, wiping his knife clean before putting it away. "Nothing makes a mission feel complete like a good knifing."

"You enjoy cutting people way too much," Kim said. "Now we run!" They sprinted down the hallway until finding a "stairs" sign. Kevin lead the way into it. His stubby legs limiting him to taking one riser at a time. Kim scooped him up and raced down stairs two and three steps at a time. They burst through the door marked "G" and race along a glassed-in concourse until they found a niche to hide in.

Kim set the small man down and before she had a chance to look and see where they were Kevin had drawn his knife and pointed it at her throat.

"Don't! do! that! again!" Kevin snarled. "I know I'm short, but I'm not a baby! No one treats me like a baby!" Kim had never see such a murderous a rage in his eyes.

"Put that knife away," she ordered, "I'm the boss here and I won't take any shit from you."

"And I won't take any disrespect, either."

"Put the knife away." The two stared at each other angrily. Kim fought back the urge to apologize, to make nice. That was what her mother had done all her life. As Lady Au Pair Kim had vowed never to be the weak one.

They were still staring at each other when Tim-Tom came racing around the corner. As suddenly as the knife had appeared it disappeared and Kevin turned to his partner as if nothing had happened. "Any trouble getting here?" he asked.

"Nothing that a good knifing couldn't take care of." Tim-Tom answered with a sinister laugh. "What's the plan."

"There's a hanger down that way. We're going to steal a plane." Kim explained.

"I've got some remote-detonated explosive placed near the generators. You say the word... and ka-boom!"

"Not till we've on the ground!" Kim repeated. She took a peek out into the walkway. For the moment it was deserted. "Let's go." She set off on a long-legged pace that the moppets found hard to keep up with.

Kim was disturbed by the siren. Instead of armed minions filling the walkway everyone had disappeared and the rate of cannon fire had increased, much of it from a difference set of guns, smaller with a sharper "bang" instead of the previous lumbering "booms." Anti-aircraft fire?" she wondered. And who were they firing at? The Mexican air force, maybe. But did the Mexicans have a base near Cancun and could they have scrambled a fleet this quickly. The only other air force she could think of was the US Air Force but this was way south of the border, out of their jurisdiction.

Three of them skidded into the hanger and slid to a stop. The building was empty. There were bays for three medium sized planes, Learjets or such, chests of equipment, worktables, but no workers and no planes.

"Look for some parachutes, a hang-glider, anything." Kim snapped, refusing to give up yet. They split left and right while she drifted towards the open hanger door. She had planned to look among the heaps of pallets there but the sight outside the hanger frozen her movements.

"Guys!" Kim called.

They joined her at the hanger door and stared.

Off in the distance, at level with the flying island was a large - aircraft carrier? - hanging in the air from giant propellers. Clouds of smoke speckled the skies around the flying behemoth. More clouds opened up followed by the slow arriving 'bangs' she had been hearing. This was what Dr. Gravity's men were fighting. The bombing of the resort town suspended to ward off this!

Swarms of gnat-like small objects were zigzagging between the clouds of anti-aircraft fire, descending on the flying island. As they neared Kim could see that they were one-man flying machines resembling a jetski only with a jet exhaust ducted through nozzles fore and aft. The skyskis were coming straight towards the runway leading out front of the hanger.

"Hide," Kim said, backing into the hanger. She found a space behind some of the pallets near the hanger door. Kevin and Tim-Tom slid in next to her.

"Find your own hiding place."Kim told them.

"They'll find us anyway if they do a thorough search of this place. Together me might be able to overpower them," Tim-Tom said.

"Or stick a knife in them" Kevin added, with a purr of pleasure in his voice

"This is a good place to do a little knifing."

"Let's try to be ignored, instead," Kim suggested.

The skyski's floated to the ground in a flare of hot gases. The riders were wearing blue OSI uniforms, carrying rifles, or flamethrowers, a couple had grenade launchers. They formed up into platoons and quick marched into the covered walkway leaving a handful of men behind to guard the fliers.

"I want one of those things," Kim whispered. "God, I'd love to fly around on one of them."

The guards were grouped around near the hanger door, smoking and chatting like they weren't part of some deadly mission. Molotov Cocktease, the head of the Blackhearts, had pounded it into her recruits that there were no pointless tasks in a mission, and if any one of her trainees were caught being that slack heads would - literally - roll. But they were still between her and escape on the skyski.

"Give me something to throw," she ordered. A moment later Tim-Tim handed her a rusty plumbing flange he'd found kicked into the corner. She tossed it deep into the hanger on the opposite side of the building. It landed with a loud clang and rattled into silence.

The guards started, looked around for interlopers, then as a group edged into the hanger and slowly spread out.

The moppets silently disappeared from Kim's side. She crouched down and practised looking scared. Moments later a flashlight flicked over her face.

"What th-" began the soldier and ended with a gasp. The flashlight snapped off but not before Kim could see the moppets cleaning their knives on the soldiers shirt.

They slid around the pallets, keeping it between them and other OSI agents.

"Anyone know how to fly one of these things," Kim asked as they looked over the first machine they came to. An extended seat straddled a jet engine. A handle bars came up at the front. The handle bar seemed designed to pivot left, right, forward and back. The right hand grip looked to rotate like a throttle. There was a row of buttons on the left hand-grip. Kim guessed they triggered the mounted guns on the flying machine.

She was looking for the starter when someone tackled her, carrying her heavily to the ground. She tried to twist free but the man had a firm grip on her arms and held her down with his greater weight. Two more men threw themselves on her, pinning her to the pavement. The moppets likewise were piled on by OSI agents.

"Commander! Commander!" someone shouted, "We've caught Doctor Gravity!"

A moment later a heavy tread walked up to her. A deep, familiar voice snarled, "That's a woman, you know."

Kim rolled over and saw a familiar face. He was easily the tallest man she'd ever met, close to seven feet tall, with impossible broad shoulders narrowing down in a tiny waist. His hair, long and blond was cut in a mullet. He looked as if he ever smiled his face would break. He was the last person Kim wanted to met just now - or ever. Still she put on a brave face and said, "Hey, Brock, how's it going?"

"Do I know you?" he asked.

"Sure. I was over to the Venture's lots of time. I'd see you washing that car of yours. I'm Triana's friend, Kim?"

The former Venture bodyguard squinted at her. After a long pause he asked, "What are you doing dressed up like Dr. Gravity?"

"He cut off my clothes and was going to do nasty things to me when you guys attacked. This was the only thing I could find."

Sampson grunted as if this made perfect sense. He looked at the two moppets struggling in the grips of the guards. "Those two make you out as the new Lady Au Pair. According to OSI records you've killed four civilians during a bank robbery and tried to Arch Hank Venture before becoming a Guild member."

Kim didn't really have an answer for that.

"So what's a Guild agent doing on Doctor Gravity private flying island?"

"It's a long story..."

"Make it short."

"The Guild told me as an initiation I had to rob this Koswalski guy blind."

"Did you?"

"Yeah. So if you're here to neutralize him, in a way I've already done your job." Kim smiled brightly but Samson looked unmoved.

After a moment he touched the communicator fixed on his shoulder. "Momma Bear, come in, this is-" did he pause and roll his eyes, Kim wondered - "Goldilocks."

"Samson, is that you?" a harsh and crazy sounding voice came over the speaker. "Have you got that yellow-bellied weasel yet?"

"Ah, no sir, but my men are on it. A situation has come up. We have a Guild agent on the island, claims to have stolen all of Dr. Gravity's money."

"What of it? I'm not after the Guild today. I want Dr. Gravity!"

"Yes, sir. It's just... If she's telling the truth and she's stolen all of his money we can stand back, blow up the island and not have to worry about him rebuilding. It would save us a lot of trouble."

"She? Samson get your pants zipped. Eye on the prize, which is Doctor Gravity and not some big-titted bimbo."

"I am not a bimbo!" Kim retorted.

"Sir," Samson said into the communicator, "all I need is for your boys to run a credit check on him. See how much money he still has in his accounts."

"All right, all right, don't get those tighty-whities in a twist. What's that?" - he was apparently shouting to someone on his end of the mike. "Totally? Every cent?"

"Samson," 'Momma Bear' shouted into the microphone. "The bean counters say all his money was moved out in the last twenty minutes. How do we know your Guild girly did it and not Koswalski? It could be a trick by him!"

"Because I've got his access codes," Kim told the distant Momma Bear. "Kevin, give him the chip."

"Mum?" but the black dwarf pulled out the tiny black chip from his pocket and handed it to one of the agents piled on time of him. "It's got all sort of diagrams and schematics on it as well. Probably everything he knows."

Brock took the chip and put it in a pocket in his suit. "All right you people let them go. I want to you met up with Bravo company and search the third quadrant for Dr. Gravity. Arrest anyone you see and bring them to the staging area for the choppers. Hustle! Go! Go! Go!"

Kim watched the guards march off leaving Samson alone with her and the moppets.

"You're free to go," he told them.

"Is there any way we could hitch a ride to the ground?" Kim asked.

"We're not a taxi service."

Kim eyed the number of skyski's parked out on the runway, unguarded now since Samson had sent their guards away.

"OK. Good luck with finding Koswalski. And when you do, give him a punch for me. He was going to rape me, you know."

"Whatever." Samson seemed to be struggling with something for a moment, then he reached out and grabbed her by the chin. His fingers closed in on her jaw like a clamp. "Listen very carefully," he said. "Find another line of work. 'Cause if you harm so much as a hair on Hank Venture's head I will hunt you down and squash you like a bug. Do you get me?"

"I don't think 'Momma Bear' would approve of you freelancing," Kim said pulling out of his grip, "but I'll keep that in mind."

Samson looked like he was about to explode in a rage, but controlled himself after a moment and walked away.

Kim watched him leave, reflecting on his words, while the moppets swarmed over one of the skyskis and got it's jet running.

"Come on, mum, we've had enough of this place!" Kim reluctantly turned away and climbed on the running flyer.

Since Kim was the only one with legs long enough to reach the pedals on the floor she was given first place on the extended seat. She twisted the handle-grip. The jet revved in response and slowly the skyski lifted off the ground. Tilting the handlebar forward sent the craft drifting forward, turning the handle sent the craft leaning into a turn. She pulled the handle down and increased the engine speed. They rose ten feet off the ground. Kim pushed the handle-bar forward and they drifted down the runway. Kim had to bite down on her lip as they drifted over the edge. Suddenly there was nothing below them but a really distant sea. After a moment waiting for her heart to slow down, Kim set the skyski into a slow glide towards the ground. She would have liked to drop out of the sky like a rock until they would out of sight of either Koswalski's Laputa or the OSI's mothership but not knowing how well the craft handled and not wanting to dump them into the sea she took the slow and cautious path.

As she waited for them to get closer to the sea Kim thought about what Brock Samson had told her. Clearly he knew about her plans to Arch the blond Venture boy, and didn't approve. But was he really a threat. When she was hanging out with Triana he was just this guy who washed his car a lot. Sure he was big, but was he scary?

She called over her shoulder, "Goldilocks, what's he like"

"Don't worry, mum," Kevin, who was seated right behind her, said. "We can take him."

Kim considered Kevin's boast with the feel of Samson's hand on her chin. "Tim-Tom," she called. "Do you still have that detonator?"

"Yes, mum."

"Do it."

Kim glanced over her shoulder at the huge block of granite serenely floating in the air. Nothing happened at first but after a couple of minutes the island started to wobble. Skyskis took off in a swarm heading back to the aerial aircraft carrier. Bigger helicopter swarmed on and off the troubled island. And then suddenly the island dropped - like the rock it was, speeding faster and faster. The three of them watched it splash into the ocean sending up a huge jet of water and a racing ring of waves.

"RIP Anton Koswalski and Brock Samson." Kim muttered, turning back to the approaching shore.

"Never count anyone out until you've seen their corpse," Tim-Tom said.

"And stabbed it," Kevin added.

The shore came up fast. Kim pulled back in the handle-bar to slow their speed but they still hit the ground hard, the three of them spilling out onto the sandy beach. Over to their left was their hotel, smoking rising from broken windows on the upper floors. The north wing was missing.

"Guess we won't have to worry about checking out," Tim-Tom said.

][

The sun was setting over the waves. The OSI mothership was a dim speck in the distance, heading north. There wasn't another soul on the beach or anywhere near their hotel. Kevin was roasting some hotdogs over a campfire. They had broken into one of the hotel's cabana's and found trays of chocolate bars and a warming refrigerator filled with hotdogs. Kim had decided to forego the dogs, though Kevin assured her that they were so filled with preservatives that they would never spoil. The candy bars seemed a safer choice.

Watching the two dwarves bicker and josh each other, Kim felt good with the world. They had completed their first official Guild mission, They had survived some unpredictable, dangerous situations. They made a good team. Kim was happy. Except for one thing. It was something she would have to deal with. May was well do it now as ever.

"Kevin, come with me." The moppets looked at each other. "It was nice knowing you," Tim-Tom said in a tone that implied he never expected to see his partner alive.

She let him down the beach till they came to a pile of chaise lounges tossed up by the tidal wave created by the falling Laputa.

She leaned against the twisted furniture ad looked out to sea. After a long pause she began. "I picked you up solely because I knew I could run down the stairs faster than you. I did not know how you felt about being manhandled. I will not do it again."

"Yes, mum."

"But you ever pull a knife on me again I will take it away from you and stick it down your throat. Do I make myself clear"

"It won't happen again, mum."

"See that you don't."

She watched the sun sink below the horizon, and felt the cool breeze coming off the sea. You could spend a fortune and not feel the weather so wonderfully as this. Of course being alive after all they had been through that day added the poignancy of the moment.

She was about to suggest they go back when one more question crossed her mind. "Kevin, when you stumbled on me you didn't say anything about me being naked, you didn't stare or take pictures. Any other time you would have had your camera out. You and Tim-Tom are such chronic pervs. Why didn't you take advantage of the situation"

"Professional courtesy, mum. When we're on a mission we stay focused on the mission. Even if it means passing up the chance to take picture of you spread-eagled on a table. Now that the mission is over, though, I'd be careful where you change clothes..."

What a strange sense of ethics, Kim thought.

"I appreciate your courtesy. Now in the morning we're going to need a truck - no, a car. I think I'll leave the skyski to people with more balls than brains. We'll need a car for a trip to Mexico City. There's a Guild Help center there. We can pick up new passports, some spending money and take a real vacation. I'll thinking Rio."

"Oh, Rio. They got thong bikinis down there. You can see right up their..."

"Yes, but not mine.."


End file.
